They say reality bites, but I think they were actually talking about reality shows.
No argument there if that's actually the point, because if people have watched Shaq O'Neal's reality show, they have no other choice but to say it bites.
Two minutes into his second show last night (I skipped his first), I wondered why a proud network like ESPN would even bother with show that takes viewers deep inside an athlete's obsession for the spotlight. The network had to think it's doing about what paparazzi do daily as they trail Hollywood stars everywhere.
ESPN should know better. The World Wide Leader has seen Paris Hilton, Terrell Owens, The Donald, Hulk Hogan and Ozzy Osbourne, among others, take viewers in places only the mindless want to go. None of these other celebrities, however, took us where Shaq did.
There was a time when I found Shaq an intriguing personality, but that was, oh, a decade ago when he was playing the king-sized clown for boys and girls everywhere. But his public feud with Kobe Bryant changed my image of him. No, I don't blame the 7-foot-1 Shaq alone for what happened between he and Kobe. Pro basketball is a game of egos, and L.A. wasn't large enough for two egos the size of theirs.
Ego is a funny thing, because if displayed too often, it turns into arrogance. That's what Shaq's show is: brazen arrogance. Because it takes arrogance of the highest order for an athlete to go out of his element and expect to compete against top athletes in a different sport, even if it is for giggles.
I would no more expect Shaq to hit a CC Sabathia fastball than I would expect Sabathia to slam dunk in Shaq's face. I'd like to think Shaq was wise enough to see that, too.
Wisdom, however, doesn't always come with age. Often, we seem to lose a few IQ points as our 20s roll into our 30s, our 30s roll into our 40s and our 40s ... OK, OK, you get the message here, right?
But as much as I want to slap Shaq around for his stupidity here, the culprit for this reality show fiasco is ESPN itself. The network aided and abetted this mess, and it shouldn't compound this stupidity by keeping the show on the air.
Save Shaq from showing us an absurd side of himself that nobody wants to waste an hour seeing.
Add Chad Ochocinco's Twitter feed in there and Stephen Marbury's Ustream shenanigans. They don't need a green-lit show to publicly display buffoonery anymore.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, I actually like T.O.'s show and if it wasn't for my hectic schedule, I would watch it leisurely. Only because I think he is one of the few sports stars that never got a chance to show his side, and I can honestly say I've never had a chance to know it through any other means. Suffice to say, it's hard to judge a character such as Owens without the entire picture.